For more than a century, public education in the U.S. has been defined as schools that are funded, regulated, and exclusively delivered by government. The past 25 years have brought some diversified forms of delivery through charter schools and various private-school scholarship mechanisms. Nevertheless, most discussions and debates over school…

Over the last decades, many liberal democracies have experienced a tension between the education system's expressed requirement to foster citizenship norms and the liberal (sub-)ideal of norm neutrality. This dilemma has been accentuated by, on the one hand, increased ethnical and cultural diversity and, on the other hand, liberalization of…

This article features the author's reply to John Coons's "Dodging Democracy: The Educator's Flight from the Specter of Choice." First, he wants to thank Coons for his thoughtful and thought-provoking reply to "Public Funding for 'Private' Education: The Equity Challenge of Enhanced Choice." So thought provoking, in fact, did the author find…

In this much-needed volume, Nel Noddings uses her extensive experience at every level of schooling to challenge the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Noddings invites readers to think critically about the ideas underlying NCLB, the reform movement that shaped it, and the processes it has put into play. She considers such questions as: Is money the…

U.S. and British school leaders are preoccupied with many of the same issues, including the curriculum and its assessment, the reporting of pupil achievement and use of raw scores, site-based management, parental choice as a quality lever, small schools, the school board's role, and different approaches to quality improvement. Overemphasis of…

In this two volume set, educators explore the intersection of gender and education. Their entries deal with educational theories, research, curricula, practices, personnel, and policies, but also with variations in the gendering of education across historical and cultural contexts. The various contributors discuss gender as a social construction.…